2,664 research outputs found
Regional and seasonal patterns of epipelagic fish assemblages from the central California Current
The coastal Pacific Ocean off northern and central California encompasses the strongest seasonal upwelling zone in the California Current ecosystem. Headlands and bays
here generate complex circulation features and confer unusual oceanographic complexity. We sampled the coastal epipelagic fish community of this region with a surface trawl in the summer and fall of 2000–05 to assess patterns of spatial and temporal community structure. Fifty-three species of fish were captured in 218 hauls at 34 fixed stations, with clupeiform species dominating. To examine spatial patterns, samples were grouped by location relative to a prominent headland at Point Reyes and the resulting
two regions, north coast and Gulf of the Farallones, were plotted by using nonmetric multidimensional scaling.
Seasonal and interannual patterns were also examined, and representative species were identified for each distinct community. Seven oceanographic variables measured concurrently with trawling were plotted by principal components analysis and tested for correlation with biotic
patterns. We found significant differences in community structure by region, year, and season, but no interaction among main effects. Significant differences in oceanographic
conditions mirrored the biotic patterns, and a match between biotic and hydrographic structure was detected.
Dissimilarity between assemblages was mostly the result of differences in abundance and frequency of occurrence of about twelve common species. Community patterns were best
described by a subset of hydrographic variables, including water depth, distance from shore, and any one of several correlated variables associated with upwelling intensity. Rather than discrete communities with clear borders and distinct member species, we found gradients in community
structure and identified stations with similar fish communities by region and by proximity to features such as
the San Francisco Bay
The Cauchy problems for Einstein metrics and parallel spinors
We show that in the analytic category, given a Riemannian metric on a
hypersurface and a symmetric tensor on , the metric
can be locally extended to a Riemannian Einstein metric on with second
fundamental form , provided that and satisfy the constraints on
imposed by the contracted Codazzi equations. We use this fact to study the
Cauchy problem for metrics with parallel spinors in the real analytic category
and give an affirmative answer to a question raised in B\"ar, Gauduchon,
Moroianu (2005). We also answer negatively the corresponding questions in the
smooth category.Comment: 28 pages; final versio
Summertime elemental mercury exchange of temperate grasslands on an ecosystem-scale
In order to estimate the air-surface mercury exchange of grasslands in temperate climate regions, fluxes of gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) were measured at two sites in Switzerland and one in Austria during summer 2006. Two classic micrometeorological methods (aerodynamic and modified Bowen ratio) have been applied to estimate net GEM exchange rates and to determine the response of the GEM flux to changes in environmental conditions (e. g. heavy rain, summer ozone) on an ecosystem-scale. Both methods proved to be appropriate to estimate fluxes on time scales of a few hours and longer. Average dry deposition rates up to 4.3 ng m(-2) h(-1) and mean deposition velocities up to 0.10 cm s(-1) were measured, which indicates that during the active vegetation period temperate grasslands are a small net sink for atmospheric mercury. With increasing ozone concentrations depletion of GEM was observed, but could not be quantified from the flux signal. Night-time deposition fluxes of GEM were measured and seem to be the result of mercury co-deposition with condensing water. Effects of grass cuts could also be observed, but were of minor magnitude
Surgery and the spinorial tau-invariant
We associate to a compact spin manifold M a real-valued invariant \tau(M) by
taking the supremum over all conformal classes over the infimum inside each
conformal class of the first positive Dirac eigenvalue, normalized to volume 1.
This invariant is a spinorial analogue of Schoen's -constant, also
known as the smooth Yamabe number. We prove that if N is obtained from M by
surgery of codimension at least 2, then with . Various topological conclusions
can be drawn, in particular that \tau is a spin-bordism invariant below
. Below , the values of cannot accumulate from
above when varied over all manifolds of a fixed dimension.Comment: to appear in CPD
The Dirac operator on generalized Taub-NUT spaces
We find sufficient conditions for the absence of harmonic spinors on
spin manifolds constructed as cone bundles over a compact K\"ahler base. These
conditions are fulfilled for certain perturbations of the Euclidean metric, and
also for the generalized Taub-NUT metrics of Iwai-Katayama, thus proving a
conjecture of Vi\csinescu and the second author.Comment: Final version, 16 page
The Ammann-Beenker tilings revisited
This paper introduces two tiles whose tilings form a one-parameter family of
tilings which can all be seen as digitization of two-dimensional planes in the
four-dimensional Euclidean space. This family contains the Ammann-Beenker
tilings as the solution of a simple optimization problem.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure
Methanol exchange between grassland and the atmosphere
International audienceConcentrations and fluxes of methanol were measured above two differently managed grassland fields (intensive and extensive) in central Switzerland during summer 2004. The measurements were performed with a proton-transfer-reaction mass-spectrometer and fluxes were determined by the eddy covariance method. The observed methanol emission showed a distinct diurnal cycle and was strongly correlated with global radiation and water vapour flux. Mean and maximum daily emissions were found to depend on grassland species composition and, for the intensive field, also on the growing state. The extensive field with a more complex species composition had higher emissions than the graminoid-dominated intensive field, both on an area and on a biomass basis. A simple parameterisation depending on the water vapour flux and the leaf area index allowed a satisfying simulation of the temporal variation of methanol emissions over the growing phase. Accumulated carbon losses due to methanol emissions accounted for 0.024 and 0.048% of net primary productivity for the intensive and extensive field, respectively. The integral methanol emissions over the growing periods were more than one order of magnitude higher than the emissions related to cut and drying events
Technical note: Water vapour concentration and flux measurements with PTR-MS
International audienceThe most direct approach for measuring the exchange of biogenic volatile organic compounds between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere is the eddy covariance technique. It has been applied several times in the last few years using fast response proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS). We present an independent validation of this technique by applying it to measure the water vapour flux in comparison to a common reference system comprising an infra-red gas analyser (IRGA). Water vapour was detected in the PTR-MS at mass 37 (atomic mass units) corresponding to the cluster ion H3O+·H2O. During a five-week field campaign at a grassland site, we obtained a non-linear but stable calibration function between the mass 37 signal and the reference water vapour concentration. With a correction of the high-frequency damping loss based on empirical ogive analysis, the eddy covariance water vapour flux obtained with the PTR-MS showed a very good agreement with the flux of the reference system. The application of the empirical ogive method for high-frequency correction led to significantly better results than using a correction based on theoretical spectral transfer functions. This finding is attributed to adsorption effects on the tube walls that are presently not included in the theoretical correction approach. The proposed high-frequency correction method can also be used for other trace gases with different adsorption characteristics
Regularity for eigenfunctions of Schr\"odinger operators
We prove a regularity result in weighted Sobolev spaces (or
Babuska--Kondratiev spaces) for the eigenfunctions of a Schr\"odinger operator.
More precisely, let K_{a}^{m}(\mathbb{R}^{3N}) be the weighted Sobolev space
obtained by blowing up the set of singular points of the Coulomb type potential
V(x) = \sum_{1 \le j \le N} \frac{b_j}{|x_j|} + \sum_{1 \le i < j \le N}
\frac{c_{ij}}{|x_i-x_j|}, x in \mathbb{R}^{3N}, b_j, c_{ij} in \mathbb{R}. If u
in L^2(\mathbb{R}^{3N}) satisfies (-\Delta + V) u = \lambda u in distribution
sense, then u belongs to K_{a}^{m} for all m \in \mathbb{Z}_+ and all a \le 0.
Our result extends to the case when b_j and c_{ij} are suitable bounded
functions on the blown-up space. In the single-electron, multi-nuclei case, we
obtain the same result for all a<3/2.Comment: to appear in Lett. Math. Phy
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